


search and rescue

by Snickfic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, POV Outsider, Pining, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29360136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: Valkyrie finds Loki's kidnapped friend and discovers Loki failed to mention some things.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & James "Bucky" Barnes, James "Bucky" Barnes/Loki
Comments: 10
Kudos: 73
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	search and rescue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionessvalenti](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/gifts).



At the next cell she came to, Val tried again. The occupant of this one looked humanoid, which was promising. She could see the hair and the arms, hugged around the person’s knees. “Barnes?” she tried.

A pale, scruffy face looked up. He had a couple of week’s worth of beard, which checked out, and his eyes were dark and bruised-looked, probably from general misery and lack of sleep rather than violence. In a rough, disused voice, he said, “Who’s asking?”

“A friend,” Val said. She’d found a crowbar a few hallways back, and now she used it to snap the lock on his. _Primatives_. Not that she’d have taken any less joy in smashing through some electronics. “You injured?”

“No,” Barnes said, though he was slow and cautious about pushing to his feet, one hand to the wall and the other—

“Shit,” Val said. She gestured to the metal hand Loki’d mentioned, cupped around Barnes’ swollen, pregnant belly. “Loki didn’t tell us about that. Did they do that to you?”

Barnes looked down to the hand cupping over the curve—protectively, now that Val looked at it closer. A corner of his mouth twitched up. “No, no. I was, uh. I was pregnant when I got here.”

That answered several questions about the precise degree of imperious panic Loki showed up with on New Asgard, and it raised a couple of others that Val could visit later. She tossed the crowbar to Barnes, and he caught it easily. Good. “I killed all the bastards who were keeping you here, so I figure we should let the other poor idiots out of their cages before we take off. You up for it?”

“Yeah,” Barnes said, with a steely ring of finality. They hadn’t starved all the spirit out of him, then.

It was short work clearing the rest of the prisoners. Val picked one who seemed a competent sort, a Kronian woman who would have had a good foot or more on Korg, and told her about the ships on the far side of the complex. “You can make sure these people all know how to get off this rock?” Val asked—regretting her phrasing afterwards—and the Kronian woman agreed gravely that she could.

Val tossed aside the boulder she’d been smashing locks with. She caught Barnes’s eye. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Barnes looked like he was running on fumes. He dropped the crowbar and followed her out.

“It’s not much of a ship,” Val said, when they got to her little skipper. “But it’ll get you places and not give you too much shit, and it’s got a refresher for cleaning up.” 

Once they were inside, Val pointed him to the facilities. When he didn’t move, she said, “You need me to show you how they work?” He was Midgardian, and who knew what kind of vessels he and Loki had been palling around space in.

“No, I’m good. Uh, maybe a weird question, but can you do magic?”

Val snorted. “Not to speak of.”

“Oh,” he said, drooping a little. He looked dead on his feet. “Loki does this spell sometimes that lets him check on the baby. I wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“Well, I haven’t got a spell, but what I have got is a medical scanner. Sit down over there. And here, eat something.” She tossed him a nutrient bar. Who knews when he’d last been fed.

He sat pliantly on the bench she’d pointed him to, which was bolted to the bulkhead, and he ate quietly while she got out the scanner. It didn’t have parameters for Midgardians, so she set them for Asgardian and hoped that would be close enough. He’d cracked open those doors with a strength that was closer to Asgardian than Midgardian, after all.

“Hold still,” she said, and scanned him carefully, head to foot, pausing a little longer at his middle. She felt his bright, watchful eyes on her all the way through. He noticed shit, this one. 

“The ship Loki and I were on didn’t have anything like that,” he said, sounding impressed.

“Sure it did. Loki just didn’t want to use it, because everyone in that family is at least five thousand years behind the times.” She finished scanning his feet and started scrolling through the results. “Looks like you could use some food and sleep, which I doubt comes as a surprise. Otherwise this looks fine. I don’t scan a lot of pregnant people, but it’s not flashing any alarms or anything.”

“Okay.” Barnes slumped. Apparently worry had been the last thing holding him upright. He scrubbed at his eyes. “Shit. Thank you.”

“Not a problem. Look, I want to set a course home and let them know I found you. Come on up when you want to. Or just sleep if you want, it’s fine. It’ll take us a few hours to get back to the station.”

He offered her a sad ghost of a smile. “Thanks.”

She gave him a long look. “You’re a lot more polite than he is.”

Now the smile looked a little more genuine, if no less weary. “Somebody has to be, right?”

Val laughed. “Well, you’re not wrong there.”

\--

It was a few hours before Barnes made his way into the cockpit. He’d tidied his beard and tied his wet, clean hair back, and clearly he’d slept some before that. He moved carefully, cautious of his center of gravity as he settled into the co-pilot’s seat. 

“Better?” she asked.

“A lot. I think I might have cleaned you out of those nutrient bars, though. Sorry about that.”

Val laughed at him and shook her head. “We’ll be home in another hour or so. The station, I mean. I radioed in a while ago, let them know we were coming. Have you been? I can’t remember seeing you around.” Then again, what was one more Midgardian? That’s what came of building New Asgard within spitting distance of Earth. She might’ve walked past him every day and not noticed. Although probably not, with the arm. She’d have noticed that.

Barnes shook his head. “No, we’ve never—for some reason, we never got around to going there.” 

The silence that followed was a brooding one. Well, at least he and Loki had that in common. “All right, it’s not my business,” Val said. Barnes stiffened. “But it’s not that common, is it, Midgardian men getting knocked up?”

Unexpectedly, Barnes flushed a bright red. “Uh, no. There was an—accident. A magical accident.”

Val gave that flush a hard look. After a moment’s consideration, she said, “You mean Loki gave you a vaj and you let him fuck it, and nobody thought about contraception spells.”

Now the flush shaded from red into purple. “Pretty much.” He smiled gently down at his hand, palming his stomach—a gesture that felt so private Val wanted to look away. “I’m okay with how it turned out, though. He really didn’t tell you?”

“He showed up on the station in a panic. He said he’d lost you. It took us a while to figure out where you might be. Those goons who took you had a few different locations cloaked from Heimdall’s sight, so we had to send people out to each one, which is where I came in. I guess in all the rush, he left out a few things.”

“He tell you we were sleeping together?”

“He left that out, too.” 

Barnes nodded. All that tender happiness from a moment ago had drained away. He just looked deflated. “He’s a squirrely guy sometimes. Hard to know what he’s really thinking.”

Barnes, Val was starting to suspect, was an essentially straightforward soul. But if the baby’s origin story was not her business, this was _really_ not her business. “We’re almost there,” she said.

Barnes got quieter and more still as Val edged them into the docking bay. Even after the lurch of the gravity magnets locking them into place, he didn’t move. “You need a minute?” Val said. 

He shook himself loose of whatever had been gripping him. “I’m good,” he said. He pushed to his feet and followed her down the gangplank. 

Behind them, the doors of bay slammed shut, and the next moment the station gate opened and people poured into the bay. Loki was in the lead. He must have headed back as soon as she radioed—or else he’d come directly and left his spaceship behind, again. “Barnes,” he said, his voice still edged with panic.

“Loki?” Barnes said.

Loki reached him, took his face in his hands, and mashed their mouths together. Barnes grunted, and then, more slowly, he closed his hands on Loki’s hips and kissed him back. The handful of Asgardians who’d come to the bay to meet the new ship might as well have not been there at all. 

If Loki’d been trying to keep Barnes his dirty little secret, that secret was pretty well out. 

Thor came up alongside Val. “I see our missing friend has been found.”

“Yeah.”

A pause. “Is he with child?”

“Yeah. Congratulations, Uncle Thor.”

“Uncle Thor,” he repeated, sounded awed and looking fucking delighted. It boded poorly for any immediate plans Loki had for hiding Barnes away again. Not that Loki seemed very interested in trying, just now. 

Val had meant to make sure Barnes knew where the station’s medical bay was, but it looked like Loki would get him there just fine if the need arose. As Val turned to go, Barnes pulled away from Loki long enough to catch her eye. He was grinning, the captivity and worry and uncertainty all washed away. He gave her a little wave with the metal hand, and she dipped her chin in acknowledgement.

“So,” she said as she headed for the door, “anything exciting happen while I was away?”

“Oh, well, there was a small incident—” Thor began, in that tone that meant the story would end with _And then I hit it with my lightning, and it was fine._

Val glanced back. Loki and Barnes were all wrapped up in each other again, with no eyes for anyone else. She was pretty sure they, too, would be just fine.


End file.
